eWEEK content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has dismissed as “nonsense” Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs, a new book written by former Wall Street Journal reporter Yukari Iwatani Kane that seeks to answer the question whether “a great company stay great without its visionary leader.”
You can guess the conclusion Kane came to.
“We’ve always had many doubters in our history. They only make us stronger,” Cook told CNBC in a statement.
Still, Cook is surely taking note with some relief that others have also dismissed the book, though for different reasons.
“I’d still like to know whether staff at Apple rue the day, and wish ol’ Steve was still there—or if they just shrug and say, ‘Yeah, got stuff to do right now,’ and move on. Trouble is, this book won’t tell you,” The Guardian’s Charles Arthur wrote in a March 10 review, adding that he part of the book through the “visual equivalent of gritted teeth.”
9to5Mac’s Seth Weintraub reports that Haunted Empire holds no surprises.
“The book concludes exactly how it has been prepared to conclude … Apple is in a free fall … Employees are leaving for Google and other Valley startups as soon as their stocks vest … There is no room to believe that Apple could, in fact, have ‘its most innovative years in front of it,’ to use Steve Jobs’ resignation words.”
Weintraub concluded that he didn’t hate the book, but he also admitted to being bored through the vast swaths of it that offered no new information.
On iMore.com, Rene Ritchie calls Haunted Empire “tragic,” opening her review with two words that she says she considered making the whole of the review: “Skip it.”
“It’s not even good. It’s not even mediocre,” Ritchie added. “It’s a waste of Kane’s time and talent.”
Follow Michelle Maisto on Twitter.